Customer incentive programs, such as loyalty programs, issue points to customers (i.e., participants) as a reward for certain activities such as the purchase of certain products or services or performing a certain action. These points create a loyalty or affinity with the customer and encourage the customer to continue a desired behavior. The customer is motivated through some type of reward offering which allows the customer to redeem the points for rewards. The incentive programs are offered by program owners, who determine the eligibility and redemption rules for the programs. Program managers manage the incentive programs on behalf of a program owner and reconciling the amounts due from and to the parties and/or entities to the redemption transaction. The points needed to obtain the reward (e.g., the ticket) are deducted from the customer's point account upon redemption.
Automated systems for the redemption of points for rewards typically provide interfaces for the interaction between entities necessary to fulfill the reward request. Such entities may include a program owner, a program manager, redemption vendors, and a broker that acts as an intermediary between a participant and the redemption vendors. The customer selects a reward for purchase with the points and indicates the number of points to use towards the purchase of the particular product or service that has been selected. Existing systems such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,143,087, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, typically utilize a single, hidden, large-balance credit card account held by the program manager to pay the vendor for the selected item or service, where the program manager thereafter reconciles the transaction and bills the appropriate parties.
However, since a single credit account is used, it is difficult to uniquely track a purchase or refund, e.g. two separate $500 redemption transactions for airline tickets by different participants occurring at the same time may be difficult to distinguish and/or independently track. The use of a single large-balance credit card may pose other challenges when purchases are modified or a refund is requested. For example, a participant redeems 1000 points for an airline ticket using an existing redemption system. After receiving the ticket, the participant calls the airline, requests changes on the ticket, and the airline charges the additional changes to the credit card used on the original purchase transaction. The program manager's large-balance credit card gets billed for the transaction and due to the difficulty in tracking the purchase (as noted above), it becomes a non-trivial task to reconcile the amount and bill the appropriate party.
There is an opportunity to eliminate the need for a single, hidden, large-balance credit account in the redemption of points, as well as an opportunity to provide for the easy reconciliation of amounts due to and from each party and/or entity to the points redemption transaction.